Andersonville (84 page)

There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.

There the prisoners rest together.

Willie Mann and Eri Gaines went down into the well and, working with the speed born of acute necessity, managed to close up the mouth of the tunnel. It was not an especially good job, and would not have defied close scrutiny. Still, the guards never found it. They were too incompetent, too old, too young, too impatient, they moved too rapidly about their search. Eri Gaines would die in Andersonville, Willie Mann would not, Lew Ammons would die in Andersonville, Old Bush would die in Andersonville, Willie Mann would not. Benny Ballentine would live to be eighty-six.

 XLVI 

...S
oldier, do you hunger, are you sickened by the bitter fare they give you, the bitter fare withheld? Would you dine again on fresh plucked quail and baked potato? Sit down and place the wooden trencher across your knees, and—mind! the potatoes are very hot, they can burn your fingers; and the birds are scarcely cooler. . . .

So once more Nathan Dreyfoos strayed from Andersonville, and higher, higher he was riding: no more Moorish towns streaked in white along the precipices, no more farms. Stony watercourses (all dry as toast because the upper snows were long since gone, and so the water of snows’ melting was gone) enfolded each its treasure of pink and green, the dry hills squeezed their pink and green, the pink oozed luxuriantly from watercourse crevices as if the hand of the hills had pressed it from a tube, and its name was oleanders. A billion oleander blooms to tickle the soul . . . how long, asked the boy, have they grown here? Did Carthaginians plant them, did Phoenicians scatter the seeds? Nay, magpies and nightingales must have let the treasure fall from their beaks when this wild portion of the planet was still cooling.

Out into the path the squat charcoal burner marched, and held up his hand in a manner of defiance, halting Nathan, halting the little
mulo
in his tracks.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, friend.

Please, do you have wine with you? My bottle is dry. My wife should have brought me wine yesterday, but she did not appear. I have been drinking water but I fear to become ill because of the water.

That is not true. The water in these mountains is pure. I have been drinking of it for two days.

Ha. You are young. I have thirty-one years, and I have health because I drink much wine.

Friend, I have two liters of wine with me, and I am happy to share with you. Nathan reached into the basket hanging behind him and brought forth a hide bottle which bulged like the udder of an unmilked goat. The eyes of the charcoal burner gleamed with joy, and blackened corners of his mouth twisted, and his sooty eyebrows went on high. God will reward you, he said. He tipped the bottle above his open mouth and the lovely purple stream spurted. He drank, swallow, swallow, long swallow, pause, long swallow, swallow, swallow, swallow. He lowered the bottle, not so bulging now, and said, Ah, in a rapture which echoed along the splintered chasms above.

You dwell here alone?

Through many days. It is necessary, because I am a charcoal burner, and must keep the fires going, and distribute the wood, and remove the
carbón
when it is charred. My wife lives with her father on the road to Gaucín
;
she cannot live with me here in my hut, because the place is too high for her. You know—women, with their infirmities? Or do you know? You are very young. How many years have you?

Only fifteen.

You are tall,
hombre
—taller than I, by far, and I am twice thy age. May I be permitted to have more wine?

Yes, yes, yes—please.

Again the thin pretty stream curving, the open mouth receiving. The urine of the gods, said the charcoal burner, and he and Nathan laughed at the ancient jest.

Man, what name have you?

Natán. And you?

I am called Pepe. José Romera and Mancera, but of course I am called Pepe. Natán, can you shoot a gun?

Yes, I have skill with guns.

Can you kill birds?

I have killed many birds. In France, doves; also here in Spain. In Scotland I have shot many grouse. In the United States of America I have killed many birds of the name of wild ducks—some are called mallards, some are called teal.

Is that a jest? You have traveled in many nations, and you are so young?

Nathan Dreyfoos felt uncomfortably ashamed, and felt also a sudden discomfort which did not stem from shame. Perhaps Pepe was acquainted with bandits, and would tell them that in these mountains and on this path there traveled a youth who had ranged far and wide through the world, and whose parents must be wealthy without doubt and able to pay a large ransom.

But he felt also that he must not lie to Pepe. He had been taught that there was an infallible virtue in truth for its own sake. Solomon Dreyfoos said that even in business it was not necessary to lie. There were wiser and more diplomatic ways to avoid offending, or to convey an intended meaning; a man should cultivate these methods, and not burden his conscience with untruths. Nathan could not recall himself as telling fibs—not since he was six or seven, and stole comfits and barley sugar, and denied it, and got a thrashing.

He said, My friend, it is a strange story, too long a story to be related now. But I swear it by the head of my mother.

Natán, I have a gun, also powder and shot. In this upper valley are many
cordonices
but my eyes give me pain and I cannot see as well as I could when I was younger. Perhaps it is because I have filled my eyes with smoke for so many years, as a charcoal burner. I grow weary of baked potatoes. Do you like baked potatoes?

Yes, very much. Especially with salt and butter.

Salt I have, but no butter. But how should you like to dine on baked potatoes, dinner after dinner, luncheon after luncheon? Also for breakfast? I have bread and oil; but my bread is growing dry as a rock; my wife was to bring me fresh bread, and I pray that she is not sick. Natán, why should you not take my gun and shoot some quail? Can you afford to spend the time? I have wasted powder and shot, many times; as I informed you, my eyes are bad. It is early for quail, but certainly the chicks are now large enough to take care of themselves. Please?

For reply Nathan brought his mule off the track and past the smouldering charcoal kilns, and up to the very door of Pepe’s hut. It was the usual habitation of shepherds or herdsmen in lonely places—a conical wigwam thatched with pine, floored and based with stones, softened with a thick bed of dry grasses.

Where is your gun? Where is a good spot for Tomás to graze?

I have my gun in my hut, wrapped in a blanket. It has rust but it will serve. Is Tomás the name of your mule? He is a handsome animal. See—below here, immediately beyond those large rocks, there is still some grass—some of the grass is still green or partly green.

I shall remove the saddle.

Natán, allow me to assist you.

...High he went along the scar of a stream no longer a stream. He could actually hear birds piping ahead of him. The gun was a smooth-bore flintlock, very old, it had a loose stock, it would not do to load it with a heavy charge. It would be necessary to kill the quail at close range, he would need to shoot quickly as they rose. The gun’s lock had proved rusty and stiff, but Pepe used olive oil, working it into the mechanism with his thumb, holding the weapon aloft, turning it, oiling through gravity. Nathan examined the flint, didn’t approve of it, requested a fresh flint, which was found. He donned an ammunition belt—a kind of antique bandolier, dry and smelly, with pouches for shot, powder and a special fine priming powder. Nathan rubbed this latter substance in his palm, and sniffed it. Where had such powder ever come from; how had the lonely charcoal burner acquired it? It was fine, silvery, beautifully blended, crushed to infinitesimal particles, finer than the finest English powder; surely it would explode with a flash, instanter.

High he went, there were plants like sage, plants like heather, surely they were sage and heather. Clumps of cobalt live-forever flowers tufted underfoot, the afternoon sun glinted on scraps of marble, two eagles swung challengingly. The first quail came flurrying up with a light roar; Nathan lifted his gun but did not shoot. He wished to grow accustomed to the feel of the weapon, to grow accustomed to the buzzing of quail’s wings and the sight of their feathers whirling, their wings blurring. Another bird, more birds . . . next time he would fire. Two feathery little bombshells went bursting up in a single second, and Nathan took the left-hand
cordoniz
of the brace; he longed for his own double-barrel. The fancy powder burnt with the flame of a star, the charge roared with a sullen gasp in the rusty barrel, the shot flew out, the bird came down. Nathan reloaded laboriously before he went to pick up his prize, and it was well that he did so: another bird flew out before he reached the dead one. In Scotland he had known an old gillie who called such a lonely lingering refusing-to-fly-until-the-last-possible-moment bird a
jouck
or
jouk
or
joock
—anyway it was rhymed with
book
or
look.
The jouck
died in midair and fell near the other. Far down the glen Tomás brayed in annoyance each time the gun was fired. Nathan wasted but two charges on empty air; also he wounded one bird slightly, crippling it until the poor thing went hobbling into the shrubbery and he had to run after it and dispatch it with a stick. Otherwise he shot to perfection, and came back an hour later, glorying in splashes of oleander pink which burst from creased valleys far below. He lifted his voice in a homemade
flamenco
. His new friend Pepe replied in kind; he sang with a voice far more musical than Nathan’s; he confessed that he sang assiduously, beguiling his loneliness all day long and sometimes in nighttimes when he thought of his young wife. He sang now a
saeta
completely out of season. He sang that it was a long and dolorous road which Our Lord was compelled to walk . . . oh, dear Lord, the nails in his hands . . . so heavy the Cross. Pepe had drunk more of the wine and—wineless for two preceding days—was growing slightly tipsy. He had put several fat new potatoes to roast in the ashes of his kiln, and displayed proudly to Nathan a bottle of oil which he said was the best to be had in Andalucia . . . it was refined in Coín, highly refined . . . members of the royal family sent all the way from Madrid and Aranjuez for this same oil.

Nathan came apparently empty-handed, except for the gun from which he now drew the charge for safety’s sake.

What? No fortune? No quail? I thought you were an expert.

See,
hombre
! For a trick Nathan had tied the dead birds to a cord slung down the middle of his back. He lifted the loop over his head and twirled the feathery burden to the ground in front of the startled charcoal burner. See. Ten birds. Sufficient? Roast them all and eat all you please, and keep some of them to eat cold at your next
comida
!

Nathan had eaten nothing since early morning except cheese and a wad from a loaf of bread (he preferred crusts to the insides of the loaves, and had eaten the crust from this loaf the day before). He sat on a rock with long arms bent around his knees, watching Pepe at his cookery. It seemed that Pepe could cook birds as well as
carbón
. Pepe had made a long spit of peeled wood and on this spit the quail were impaled, roosting and roasting in a solemn headless gutted row. Someone else must come past this lonely place now and again, for Pepe admitted that he could not shoot birds, yet he had the crotched posts for his spit already cut, old and blackened; and crevices had been prepared to receive them. Yes, someone else came to that place and secured quail.

My friend, you have some other person who provides
cordonices
for your kitchen?

Pepe turned swiftly. His face was so baked by the heat and so dirtied by his occupation that Nathan could not estimate the expression accurately; yet he was certain that Pepe gave him a look of intense suspicion.

No, young sir. No one.

But the posts for the spit? They were prepared.

Oh, once I had a partner. That was long ago. He is dead, he died beneath an avalanche. See? Over on that next mountain. Under that great loose mass of gray stones, he is lying there somewhere, very deep down; it was impossible to dig him out. No, no,
hombre,
this is a lonely place! No one comes.

...But now, he cried in another hour, waving a quail breast aloft, this is indeed my afternoon of fortune. You have brought me good fortune, Natán! See: look down at the cleft where the path curves, where the clumps of mullein are growing. Do you not see her? My wife! See, she comes with one basket on her head and another on her arm. She is late in coming, which means that she will spend the night with me. Thanks to God.